


of us, a history complete

by garyindistress



Category: Super Junior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-21 00:54:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/591600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/garyindistress/pseuds/garyindistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chronicling their lives after Super Junior.</p>
            </blockquote>





	of us, a history complete

On his twenty-eighth birthday he makes an announcement via mass text.

After twenty-five seconds that stretch on to eternity, Kangin is the first to text back.

ru drunk? ps happy bday

After that his phone beeps nonstop. He read the first few (leeteuk: who else got this text? are you drinking? this isn’t funny heechul; kibum: happy birthday hyung and congrats. i already knew tho) and then shuts the phone with a snap and chucks it at the wall opposite himself. It lands on the bed silently.

He wasn’t drunk but he brushes it off the next morning when their manager calls. “What?”

“I’m asking what last night was all about, Heechul.”

He laughs, his throat making a dry sound. “I don’t even remember last night, hyung. If you got any weird texts, it’s probably because Kyuhyun was messing around with my phone while I was smashed.”

“Oh. Okay. Don’t drink so much next time, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Oh, and happy 28th. Two more and you’ll be old like I’ve been for years.”

 

They decide to separate on their tenth anniversary, with a press conference that fills a hall of two hundred. They sit in a long row behind three connecting tables. Kangin joked that it must have been hard to find a room wide enough for all of them to fit. They all laughed, except Eunhyuk, who cried even harder than before.

“It’s been a good run,” Leeteuk is saying. “We’re eternally indebted to our fans for believing in us and following us all these years. I hope that you will all keep supporting us even as we take on solo projects and go different paths.”

Heechul nods gravely, all business and manners today. It has been a good run. But it wasn’t like they hadn’t had to give things up. Under the table he feels for the larger, warmer hand beside him and gives it a tight squeeze. 

 

They move in together that year, into a small apartment of their own. Everyone else has separated, gone their own ambitious ways, but Heechul can’t imagine his future without him. He hasn’t been without him for the past thirteen years. 

They go shopping together, picking out matching mugs and tableware and art for their bare walls. “I’ll go with whatever you want,” his boyfriend says, kissing him on the forehead.

He never thought he would be so domestic.

 

“Let’s do it. Go to New Zealand or something.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why not?”

He feels strong hands pushing him gently down into a chair. “Your career, for one. People still think you’re—“

“Kim Heechul, womanizer extraordinaire?” He laughs. “You know as well as I do most people in the industry already suspect we’re together. They’ve seen us.”

“I just want you to be happy.”

“I will be. When we’ve said our vows.”

“Why can’t we say them now? Why do we need to go to a foreign country to have our love be approved by some stranger?” And then, with pleading eyes: “Why can’t we be the way we are right now forever?”

 

Forever was an awfully long time, he used to think as a child, but now he is approaching forty and still unmarried and it’s starting to dawn on his parents that the problem lies not in his impossibly high standards for women. It’s the roommate.

“Is he going to stay in Korea forever?” his mother asks casually. _Forever._ She never refers to him by name, choosing instead the comfortable anonymity of pronouns.

“He’s been here so long he’s practically Korean, mom. What’s your point?”

“My _point_ is,” as she struggles to express it, “sometimes you think you know someone, but you don’t. Even after all those years. Heechul, honey, he could be—different. If you know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” Heechul lies. “He’s my best friend. That’s all that matters.”

 

Best friends who fuck each other at night and sometimes during the day, sometimes on kitchen tables (“haven’t you heard? Hard surfaces are good for your back,” he says in his best bedroom voice, pulling on the other’s tie), who prove that age isn’t inversely proportional with desire, who soap each other’s backs, who laugh into each other’s mouths during kisses because they just remembered something funny from earlier that day, best friends like sixteen year olds nervous and sweaty-palmed, best friends like old couples feeding the ducks in the park.

 

For his fiftieth birthday he receives a kitten. “So you can name it after just me this time.”

Memories of Heebum come rushing back and he cries for the first time in years. He calls her Baby, after something they’ll never have.

 

Super Junior has a twenty-year breakup anniversary. “What does that even mean?” Heechul complains. “What’s a ‘breakup anniversary’?”

He is hushed. “We’re almost there. Don’t be so nervous.”

Once they are together, it’s like nothing has changed. Everyone looks older; that’s a given. Kyuhyun’s the only one who still can pass for a handsome bachelor, but he’s already married with two kids, five and seven. “The older one has his eyes glued to the computer at all times. I try to tell him it’s not healthy, but he doesn’t listen,” he confides, and Heechul wonders if he’s being ironic.

Everyone’s married except for the two of them. Everyone knows, or they should, he thinks.

Leeteuk comes up to him, hair streaked with gray and wrinkles lining his face, but traces of his past boyish good looks remain. His smiles still reveal the same charming dimples, that ones that high school girls had dreamed about poking.

“Are you happy?” Leeteuk asks, still the old leader.

Heechul laughs. “Worry about yourself. You’re the one with the nagging wife and kids.”

Leeteuk returns the smile. “They’re keeping me busy, alright.”

“That’s good. Don’t overwork yourself though. Like you always did.”

“Could say the same for you. But it looks like you have someone to keep you grounded,” and he gestures toward the opposite corner of the small room, where Hankyung, Kibum, and Siwon are engrossed in a serious conversation.

Heechul looks at the three of them, remembering how much he loved them all. Still does. But one more than most. “I do.”

Leeteuk nods absentmindedly and then clears his throat. His voice is scratchy when he speaks again. “I’m sorry about that time, Heechul, that time on your birthday. When you tried to tell us and we wouldn’t let you.”

Heechul can’t believe he remembers. “It’s okay. Ancient history.”

 

He’s happy. They go fishing sometimes, and the rod trembles in his hands. They bring an mp3 player, even though no one uses them anymore these days, and chunky speakers and play old songs that they still know all the lyrics to, marvel at how raw and young everyone sounded. “Wait—listen, this is my part!” But his three seconds are up, and Yesung’s already started his riffs. He sulks and demands to be fed some sashimi, now.

He watches as the other man cuts the fish carefully, choosing only the best parts to slice. He worries sometimes that he’ll cut himself and remembers the first aid kit in the car. He thinks back to when he had a paper cut all those years ago, when they were still performing as a group, and his finger had been taken and so gingerly placed between two dry lips, licked where the blood ran in a thin trickle across the skin. “It’s okay, I can take care of myself,” he had said, pulling away, but that was the beginning then, wasn’t it. That was when he started falling.

 

He doesn’t remember falling, but is told by the doctor that he hurtled down a flight of stairs. He waits outside as his friend and the doctor speak in quiet voices. He fiddles with his hands and admires the veins running over them like little rivers, the way his skin stretches so easily with a small pinch. He doesn’t notice when his friend emerges from the room with a smile on his face, “Let’s go home.”

 

He doesn’t recognize the place, or the fat cat lying unmoving by the window, although his friend reminds him that both are his. “And this is the watch I gave you for our fifteenth anniversary,” his friend says, wrapping it around his wrist. 

He doesn’t realize that friendships have anniversaries. The world has changed while he was gone.

 

He realizes he doesn’t know his friend’s name. He only remembers that they’re friends, maybe even best friends judging by the way the other man looks at him, always with those sad, droopy eyes. He recognizes love even if he doesn’t remember it. He’s too embarrassed to ask for his friend’s name and resorts to using “you.” “You—want to watch TV?” “You—are these socks clean?”

He wonders why they live together. Why they’re both nearing seventy and without families. He wonders if he ever had one.

 

His friend is the first to go. He wakes up early one morning, lowers his feet onto the cold floor and feels around for his slippers. He makes his way into the kitchen slowly and decides to make breakfast for once. It isn’t fair that his friend is always the one cooking, even with the tremor in his hand. He needs to do his share, he thinks with a chuckle which turns into a cough.

He waits in the kitchen with two plates, on each resting one egg, sunny side up. An hour passes, and his friend is still asleep. He walks into their bedroom and nudges him gently but finds his arm cold to the touch. He panics and rushes into the kitchen, nearly pulling a muscle. The fat cat, “Baby,” jumps from the window.

 

He doesn’t know who to invite to the funeral so he looks through drawers for a phonebook. Instead he finds album after album of photos and memorabilia.

“August 10th—“ and then scribbling in Chinese characters, of which he only recognizes his own name, under a photo of a younger version of himself frowning at the camera, shielding with one hand his eyes from the blaze of the sun. “September 23rd,” the two of them in the kitchen with Baby, not so fat back then, his friend’s arm disappearing off the edge of the photo, probably holding the camera still with his hand. “December 1st,” their faces mashed together in a messy kiss, the photo cutting off at their bare-naked shoulders—and he drops the album.

He feels himself fall to the floor and feels that his face is wet and so is the hem of his shirt, which still smells like his friend, and he realizes that it isn’t his shirt, he took the wrong one this morning by accident, or maybe on purpose, he doesn’t know, he can’t remember these things anymore.


End file.
